Lydia Omumea, a Nairobi woman from Kibra, is picking up the pieces of her life after her husband allegedly abandoned her and their sick son to be with the househelp she had hired to care for the family.
Lydia’s story began long before the marriage fell apart. Speaking to TUKO.co.ke, she shares that she lost both her parents while still in school, forcing her to drop out in Grade 8 without sitting her KCSE examinations.
She moved in with her grandmother while her sister travelled to Nairobi in search of work.
“Life had become difficult because my sister would sometimes tell me there was no work,” Lydia recalled. Driven by hardship, she eventually found employment at a hotel, where she met a man three years her senior. After introducing him to her grandmother and sister, she got married in 2015.
The couple settled in Donholm, Nairobi, where her husband worked as a car salesman. He helped her open a shoe shop so she would not sit idle, and they managed well enough even after their first child was born.
The real difficulties began when their son, at around five years old, was diagnosed with blood cancer and required regular hospital visits.
How Ugandan househelp took over Lydia’s home
To balance running the shop and caring for her son, Lydia accepted a recommendation from a friend and brought in a Ugandan woman as a housemaid. For two years, there were no obvious warning signs.
“At first, she was not malicious, and she did not show any signs that she was,” Lydia said. Over time, however, the woman grew defiant, ignoring instructions and repeatedly failing to collect the boy from school.
On one occasion, Lydia returned home early to confront the issue and found the househelp with her husband. She dismissed it. Then one day she came home to find them together in the bedroom she shared with her husband.
Rather than ending the affair, the situation grew worse. Her husband reportedly stopped funding their son’s medical treatment and eventually forced Lydia out of their bedroom so the househelp could sleep there in her place. Lydia found herself washing their bedsheets and serving them food.
“I was the one cooking and picking up my son from school, while she would sit around all day doing her nails and disrespecting me,” she said.
One day in 2025, Lydia returned home to find the house locked, a key left with a neighbour and her husband gone. The househelp had also packed her belongings and left.
Her husband stopped answering her calls and eventually blocked her number. His relatives offered no help either.
With rent unpaid, her son critically ill and her shoe shop forced to close, Lydia sold household items to cover medical bills. Her sister eventually moved her from Donholm to Kibra.
“I was at rock bottom. I became depressed and even thought about dying” she admitted, “but I asked myself who would take care of my child if I was dead.”
Today, Lydia washes clothes and utensils for neighbours to make ends meet, holding on for the sake of her son.
